


Shoreline

by Lia (Liafic)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drug Addiction, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-07
Updated: 2011-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:24:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liafic/pseuds/Lia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amid the flames of revolution, Hermione learns that salvation can be found in unexpected places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoreline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phlox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phlox/gifts).



The world bursts into colour behind her eyes in mud and lightning the moment she wakes up. It feels like falling rapidly out of a dream: first the dull ache at the base of her skull, then the shock of being suddenly mobile. Someone holds her down gently when she tries to sit up, a blurry figure surrounded by unnaturally bright pinpricks of candlelight. The voices separate from one another, unravelling against the constant, quiet hum of conversation in the background until words swim through the veil of her understanding. 

“Hermione, are you . . . ? Stay with me.” 

This voice is familiar, and when she concentrates particularly hard, she can focus and see a haze of dark hair, bright green eyes. 

“Harry . . .” She does not recognise her voice, muted and delirious. Maybe she didn’t even speak out loud, but he is squeezing her fingers between his own and keeping up a steady stream of encouraging conversation, even though making sense of the words requires more energy than she can manage. 

The blackness is rushing in on her again, so unexpectedly that she cannot prepare for it, cannot brace herself against his reassuringly warm hand to usher herself into the dark. Her thoughts dissolve in an overexposed mosaic of pale skin and blond hair, grey eyes. There is something darker, something etched and twisted, something cold and metallic being pushed into the palm of her hand. 

Nothingness. 

**1**

She jerks awake with a start, expecting to see Harry there by the side of the bed, but the room is just barely lit with the blue-grey light of dawn through the window, and she is completely alone. She sits up to a stiffness that awakens like some sleeping beast in her bones, as if she has been out in the rain for too long and the chill has settled into all the deep places inside her. There are quiet voices muffled behind the slightly open door, a world of warmth and the smell of coffee beckoning in the ray of light that spills across the floorboards. 

She is hesitantly contemplating trying to stand up when the door swings open fully, silhouetting a tall figure that soon reveals itself to be Ron Weasley in the soft light from the hall. 

“Hermione,” he says, his voice catching uncharacteristically, “you’re awake.” 

“I—” Her voice is hoarse from disuse, and it cuts off high-pitched, like the needle being removed from a record. She winces. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “Don’t try to talk.” 

He sits in the chair by the window, the dust motes that filter through the air painting him like some serene vision, his face streaked in ash, stern like those of young soldiers in sepia photographs. Looking back on the encounter, Hermione will realise that this was the first sign: his unwillingness to come close to her, to reach out for her hand as he always did and make some wisecrack that would have her rolling her eyes and sighing, saying, “Honestly, Ronald.” His clothes are filthy, torn in places, and he sits like a man defeated. 

“Do you—” he says, and he stops as if he is going to change tactics before he bites his lower lip so hard that it turns white and starts again. “The mission failed.” 

“Where are we?” She is struggling to push herself up onto her elbows. “Where is—” 

“Harry is fine.” 

“What—were we ambushed?” 

He is watching her impassively, hunched with his elbows propped at angles on his knees, his fingers steepled rigidly against his mouth. He exhales in a low whistle and stands slowly. “I’m going to get cleaned up,” he says. “Harry is downstairs and—I’ll tell him you’re awake.” 

He makes his exit in a quick shuffle of steps, slipping into the hallway without another word and leaving her to trace the pattern of dark spots on the ceiling where water has seeped through the roof. Her thoughts are disorganised and blurry, a tense sort of panic winding its way up her spine, the knowledge that there is something she is missing flitting in the shadows at the edge of her mind even as she fights to stay awake. 

The next thing she realises, Harry is standing over her and she manages to strangle a scream halfway in her throat. She jerks up into a sitting position before he presses his hand calmly to her shoulder, to reassure her or to keep her from disturbing the entire household. Hermione exhales, falling back limply onto her pillow. She must have fallen asleep without even realising it, slipping into a fast dream filled with humidity and sunshine over floorboards. It is lighter now through the window, and the air is distinctly colder, but her face feels flushed and her whole body is tense, her knees clenched together so hard that it almost hurts, so that she has to make a conscious attempt to relax. 

“What is it?” she finally says. 

“Are you all right?” 

“What is it?” 

“What did Ron tell you?” 

She closes her eyes and presses the palms of her hands against them, trying to collect the scattered fragments of her thoughts. When she exhales and looks over at Harry, there is an expression like pity reflected in the lines around his mouth and behind his glasses in the lamplight. “Why do I feel . . . like this?” 

“You were concussed,” Harry says. He reaches out as if to place his hand over hers but then seems to think better of it, letting it drop on the mattress. Their fingers still touch, barely, and he does not move to withdraw them. 

“How?” 

“They were waiting for us at the checkpoint,” he says. “It was a setup.” He runs his hand through his hair and shoots her a terribly conflicted look, and that is the exact moment she realises something is up. 

“Harry, what happened? Did someone . . . ?” 

The word _die_ is fluttering like a caged bird in the hollow of her chest, waves of hot panic rushing through her with the rhythm of her pulse. 

“No,” he says. 

She exhales in a rush, every emotion that she has been suppressing for the past few moments flooding into the place behind her eyes, a tightness in her throat. “Oh my God, Harry—I thought . . . I thought that maybe—” 

“No,” he says. “It’s just—I feel like we’ve been fighting forever.” He wordlessly hands her a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ , the headline blazing in dark ink: _Peace in our time._

She shakes the paper open, scanning over the words listlessly before she realises they are swimming on the page in disorder, her vision spinning. “I can’t—my head.” 

“Sorry.” He reaches over and takes the paper away, folding it back along a crooked line. “They think they’ve defeated us, Hermione. I’m tired of people accepting it: the blood laws, the purges . . . like a whole nation in denial.” 

The world spins very slowly and neatly out of control while he speaks, and even though the pressure of his fingers over hers anchors Hermione to the bed and reality, there is a sick feeling that crashes in her chest and forces her over the opposite side of the bed. She keeps coughing even though nothing is coming up, tears burning behind her eyes at the helpless dizziness swimming at the corners of her vision. Harry is kneeling on the bed beside her, squeezing her shoulders, saying words that she cannot make sense of. 

“Is she all right?” Hermione hears someone saying from the doorway, and it takes her a moment to recognise the voice of Ginny: distant, hesitant, pitched higher than normal. 

“Getting there,” Hermione manages to choke out around the burning taste in her throat. 

Harry gives a quiet sort of laugh, which somehow makes everything seem a little better. 

He leaves quietly afterward, telling her that everyone is downstairs if she wants some company and that if she needs help making it down she should call him. She thinks about staying in bed, about sleeping through the day and hoping that when she wakes up she will have gone back in time, back to when they thought that the end of the war meant an end to the conflict, back to the middle of her two short months of peace. But life goes on, and eventually she drags herself up and pulls on a jumper and makes her way downstairs, pausing to breathe and reorient herself on every creaking step. Everyone in the crowded kitchen acts perfectly cheerful, George clapping her gently on the shoulder, and she ignores the too-kind, slightly wary look that Molly gives her while handing over a hot cup of tea. 

They are all, she realises, dealing with things in their own ways. 

**2**

The familiar pull, like a cord tied behind her ribs, starts up and ends just as quickly, and when she opens her eyes she is standing in the narrow alleyway beside the Leaky Cauldron. Diagon Alley is deserted, the only occupants a trio of pigeons, pecking between the cobblestones and scattering in flight as she emerges onto the street. The first thing she sees is the rubble at the end of the Alley, almost like a barricade, a gaping hole in the wall of what used to be Ollivander’s but which now bears a sign illustrated with a stylised eagle-owl. The insignia sends chills down her spine—this was the target of their failed attack, the street laid out in ash and cobblestones in her memory. 

She pulls the door of the pub open before she can think about it any more. A few people look up from their tables as the bell rings, and Tom looks over from where he is shining glasses with a rag. At first, his eyes widen and he seems about to speak, but Hermione shakes her head almost imperceptibly, and it is as if he hasn’t even noticed her entering. He disappears into the back hall. Hermione makes her way over to the stairs that lead up to the rented rooms, trying to appear as casual as she possibly can. Her hair is still wet and pulled back in a tight braid, which she hopes is enough to stop people from recognising her or remembering her picture from that one issue of the _Prophet_ during fourth year. 

She reaches the third floor to find it deserted and eerily silent, and her footsteps seem unnaturally loud. The doors pass her in a blur of numbers, her pulse racing as she reaches 314 and undoes the chain at the back of her neck, fingers shaking. This is the location. The key, passed from hand to hand in the midst of battle, is warm and heavy in her palm, and she is about to slip it into the lock when she hears the resoundingly fractured sound of glass shattering behind the door, and she freezes. Silence falls again before there is a dull thud, and she has horrible visions of a body sprawled bleeding and unconscious across the floor. Her hands are shaking as she fumbles the key in the lock, and when the door finally swings open, there is a horrible moment where the muscles in her legs tense to run. 

Malfoy reaches out suddenly, like the unexpected strike of a viper, and pulls her into the room, slamming the door closed behind him. His eyes are glassy, shadowed in bruises of blue and purple from a lack of sleep, and his hand is cold at her throat. The key clatters noisily to the floor, her back against the wall. Hermione cannot move. Her hands are twitching, trying to break the confines of the spell that has her panicked and immobile, but there are black spots swimming across her vision, and she can hear her breath rattling in her throat as if she has run for miles without stopping and every part of her burns desperately from lack of oxygen. Something flickers behind his eyes, something halfway between apathy and confusion. He is desperately pale and his fingers are shaking around her throat before he finally staggers back and releases her. 

The relief floods through her chest in a painful torrent, movement rushing back to every muscle of her body, the world spinning on its axis briefly while tiny spots of light burst out across the space behind her eyes. Malfoy is hunched on the opposite side of the room, as far from her as possible, holding himself up with an elbow bent against the wall. The Dark Mark is inked out in livid black across his forearm, and the remains of a stained glass lampshade are scattered in bright colours across the floor. 

“You—” he chokes out, voice hoarse, before pitching forward with his hand over his mouth. 

“Oh—my God,” Hermione breathes. 

“The morphine—” 

“I don’t—” 

“The _fucking drugs_ ,” he gasps, his face twisting. “Christ . . .” 

He is coughing violently, a horrible retching sound that triggers a sick sort of panic inside her, and she looks away. She needs to leave. She needs to forget this entire arrangement and just leave. 

“Don’t even think about it,” he says, staggering to his feet as she reaches for the handle of the door. He manages to grab her wrist and wrench her around, but she struggles wildly, landing a kick with a dull crack against his shin. He drags her down with him, and her knees hit the floor so hard that the impact travels in waves up her spine. She crawls forward, breath scraping through her throat, and pushes herself to her feet, ready to make a mad break for it. 

She hits the wall with a burst of silent magic, a force that knocks the breath from her lungs, her neck snapping back and reawakening the black dizziness of her concussion. When the world fades back into over-bright focus, he is standing in front of her, swaying on the spot as if he is going to pass out or throw up. 

“You fucking bitch,” he snaps between shallow breaths. “You planned it.” 

“I’ve been unconscious for hours—” 

“ _Fix it._ ” 

This is not happening. Malfoy sinks to his knees against the foot of the bed, and she takes one look at him and Disapparates. 

Grimmauld Place is quiet as she rushes downstairs, sublimely thankful that no one is in the kitchen when she throws open the cellar door and stumbles with hands outstretched in the darkness, feeling around for the familiar metallic coolness of the medical kit. Her hands land on it in a frenzy, and she drags it out from behind a sack of flour and onto the kitchen counter, rifling through cotton gauze and bottles of rubbing alcohol. Eventually she gives up, slamming the lid closed and pressing the case tightly to her chest while she envisions the dimly lit room she left only moments before. 

The chill wind of Apparation still clings to her when she falls onto her hands and knees across the floorboards, the case clattering to the floor. Malfoy is staring blankly at the ceiling, his body twitching as if in some sort of seizure, and she hauls herself forward, fumbling for the glass bottle and syringe. Her fingers are shaking uncontrollably as she snaps off the top of the glass and pulls back the piston, watching as the clear liquid rises up the marked lines. 

He is shaking so badly that she can barely get a hold of his arm, and when she finally does, she practically stabs the needle into the place just below his elbow. For a second she thinks she might have only made it worse, because he is still seizing on the floor. When he goes suddenly still, she pulls his head into her lap, trying frantically to find a pulse, but his chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, and she finds herself suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling like a crushing weight on her shoulders, tears burning behind her eyes. She is shaking in a cold sweat. 

Hermione sits there until she feels like she can stand up without falling over, and even then she stays kneeling on that floor, brushing blond hair back from a rapidly cooling forehead. She feels numb, as though she has just been through some sort of horrific natural disaster and does not know where to find the road home. This is not what I signed up for, she is thinking. Memories are filtering through her consciousness: she sees Ron leaning against the screen door at the Burrow, Harry and Ginny standing silhouetted against the sunset in the backyard, his fingers just barely touching hers. She remembers having to look away at seeing them together, a tight pain pulling in the hollow of her chest, because it was somehow more intimate than watching them kiss. She sits through this barrage of images until her mind is completely exhausted, and then she lies down on the hard floor, next to Malfoy, and sleeps. 

She wakes up hours later, when the sky through the window is dark, clouds hovering over the blurry halo of the moon. The room is empty, and when she pushes herself to her feet there is a note lying on the bed, written in familiar slanted cursive: _Tomorrow morning._ There is nothing else. The key and chain have been refastened around her neck, and apart from a momentary pause at the fact that Malfoy must have done this while she was sleeping, she feels nothing. She tries to imagine the warm bed at Grimmauld Place, the dark outline of rain on the ceiling, the lamplight casting shadows onto the walls— 

She stumbles into her bed. Briefly, she considers changing into pyjamas, reaching into the suitcase under the bed, but the thought of doing this transforms into the surreal images of a dream. Blond hair and grey eyes. Darkness. 

**3**

When she wakes up, it takes Hermione a moment to realise exactly where she is. The moon is low in the deep blue sky through the window, and she is lying face-down over her blankets, still fully dressed. The key is pressing uncomfortably into her collarbone, and she flips over onto her back, kicking off her trainers and jeans. She is trying not to think about what happened, trying not to reimagine the feel of his body twitching in her arms, because if she lets herself remember, a constricted sort of heat builds in her chest and makes it difficult to breathe. 

She does not tell Harry the specifics of their meetings. He knows about them, of course, because the information keeps coming and it must come from somewhere, but the how and when and where are left unspoken between them. Hermione knows that this is a mistake, because by allowing it to become a secret—something that she carries in her throat and in her lungs and in a dark place that blooms like an electric storm inside her—she realises that she has given Malfoy some measure of power over the situation. He has become the thing she thinks of before she sleeps, the hot thrill of fear that lurks behind her in deserted stairways and empty corners of the house, and she cannot forget. 

She hates him for it. 

She can hear cars passing by in the street, and the smell of coffee tells her that it must be very early in the morning, not yet light outside. Hermione fumbles across the floor before finding the medical kit, and she pulls out the remaining dose of morphine and tucks it under her pillow, suddenly realising that she left the needle on the floor at the Cauldron. She rifles through her trunk until she can come up with a pair of tracksuit bottoms, and she makes her way down the stairs as silently as she can to replace the medical kit in the cellar. When she enters the kitchen to find Ginny sitting at the counter in her pyjamas, warming her hands with a mug of coffee, Hermione almost trips over herself. 

“Morning,” Ginny says neutrally, eyeing Hermione over the top of her mug. The headlights of cars driving by beam through the windows occasionally, passing over Ginny’s face in the pattern of lace curtains. Hermione takes a mug out from the cupboard and pours herself coffee from the pot simmering on the stove, and she sits beside Ginny at the counter, sipping silently. She feels cold and restless, unused to this quiet Ginny that seems to have taken the place of her friend. Not for the first time, she wonders how this resistance has changed them. 

“We’re planning another attack,” Ginny says suddenly. “Harry wants to keep them afraid, show them that what happened in Diagon Alley didn’t knock us out for good.” 

“What does he want to know?” 

“Don’t—” Ginny sighs. “Give yourself a couple of days to recover, Hermione.” 

“I have recovered.” 

Ginny sets her mug down on the counter with a constrained motion. “Kingsley,” she says. “Harry wants to know what happened to him.” 

“Fine.” 

Ginny sighs, standing suddenly as if to leave, though she turns at the last minute, her hand just ghosting over Hermione’s shoulder. “Be careful,” she says. 

**4**

The disparate atoms of her body re-form in the third-floor corridor of the Cauldron. She opens the door without knocking, finding the room empty and semi-dark. With a quick Reparo on the broken lamp, the warm light reveals an unmade bed and a desk in the corner, covered in quills and blank parchment. 

She does not have to wait long. The door opens behind her, and Malfoy walks briskly into the room, flinging his coat onto the bed without a word of greeting. As if just noticing her presence, he curls his lips in a cruelly sudden smirk as he sits on the edge of the mattress, leaning back on his hands. 

“You came,” he says, as if there were never a doubt in his mind. 

“I want answers,” she replies. 

A mask of apathy slips over his features. “This doesn’t work that way.” 

“Doesn’t it?” 

“For fuck’s sake, Granger, get over here and stick me.” 

“Feeling dysphoric, are we? Has the shaking started, or the—” 

He lunges off the bed, stopping just short of actually hitting her. His fist slams into the wall beside her head, and she can smell the citrus of his aftershave in the air between them. “This isn’t a game,” he says. 

“Back off,” she snaps, shoving him hard in the chest. 

He steps back and gestures to the desk, where the needle is glinting almost sinister in the lamplight. “Make it fast,” he says, sitting flippantly back on the bed. 

So she does, swiping the syringe off the desk and filling it to the halfway point. She marches over to where he sits, wrenching his arm up and jabbing the point of the needle under his skin, hard enough that he jerks forward. 

“ _Fuck_ —” 

“Tell me what happened to Kingsley Shacklebolt,” she says, pulling the needle out and watching the pinprick of crimson well up in its place. 

“Give me a minute.” 

“Now.” 

“They—” A shudder courses through him and a blank sort of expression passes across his face. For a moment he stares off into nothingness, eyes dull and glassy, and then she sees feeling rushing back into his nerves. He leans forward unexpectedly, his forehead pressed against the bottom of her ribs, and she is too shocked to move. She imagines herself stepping back and leaving him here, but she cannot seem to work up the drive to do it, her breath caught somewhere in her throat. 

“You used to be . . .” he says, his voice muffled against the fabric of her jumper. Hermione tries to step back, but he pulls her into the space between his knees, his hands unexpectedly sure over her hips and his breath warm against her skin. 

“Let go of me,” she whispers. She feels entirely separate from her body, as though she is watching someone who looks like herself locked in a strange sort of half-embrace with Draco Malfoy, lightheaded and indecisive. “Stop trying to change the subject,” she snaps. “Tell me what I want to know.” 

“Which is what, exactly?” he says, staring up at her with that unnaturally empty smirk painted firmly back on his lips. 

“Kingsley.” 

“Didn’t you hear? He went on vacation.” 

“Fuck you, Malfoy—” 

“Fine. He’s dead. I watched it myself.” 

“Oh—oh my God.” 

He tilts his forearm toward the light, staring idly at the dark bruise blooming under his skin. She is still trying to collect herself when she realises suddenly that the Dark Mark is nothing more than white lines, like a faded scar. 

“Why—” she starts, staring at it with wide eyes. 

“Come on, Hermione. You’ll have to do better than drugs for that explanation.” 

“Then you can get your own from now on.” 

He looks up at her with something feral behind his eyes, standing abruptly. “Let me remind you how this works,” he hisses. “You only get one question. Now get out.” 

“I might not come back.” 

“Your loss. I know things you would just die to find out.” 

“Why?” she says. “Why are you so desperate for it that you would—” 

“Quit fucking around. You and I both know that this is your fault.” 

“My fault—” 

“You probably thought it all out. I can just picture it.” 

“And what was my master plan, exactly?” 

“Please. If putting me through withdrawal keeps me crawling back to you every time—” 

“Don’t blame this on me.” 

“Do you think I even knew about your fucking Muggle drugs before all of this?” he snarls, pressing his hand over the bruise on his arm as if to stop the flow of blood, though his fingers are shaking in place and she can tell that the half dose is already beginning to wear thin. 

“Look, Malfoy. I get that you’re delirious or whatever—” 

“Shut it,” he hisses. “I’m perfectly lucid.” 

She can only keep it up for so long before she sees as if for the first time how pale he has gotten, how his chest rises and falls too fast, and his eyes are half closed even while he threatens her. It all hits her with startling clarity, and she feels sick. 

She refills the syringe with the rest of the dose and kneels behind him on the bed. “Lean back,” she says. 

“Fuck off.” 

“Just do it, Malfoy.” 

Eventually, he leans back against her chest, maybe more out of exhaustion than any willingness to cooperate. She can feel his heart beating fast and erratic, and she reaches down to press the flat of her palm against his arm, running her fingers over the pale blue veins that stand out in sharp relief under his skin and ignoring the shiver that thrills down her spine when she pushes the needle in as gently as she can. He exhales in a hiss through his teeth, something halfway between pain and ecstasy etched across his features. When she pulls the empty needle out, the metal is covered in dark red. 

“This is it,” she says. “I’m not doing this again.” 

“Stop talking, Hermione,” he sighs. 

“I’m serious.” 

He sits up and turns around halfway to face her. “What do you want from me?” he says. 

“I don’t—I’ll bring you enough to last a while, and just slowly decrease the amount.” 

He grabs her shoulders hard. “You can’t just stop. I need it. You don’t understand—” 

“I understand that this was obviously a horrible mistake.” 

“No, you—” 

“Malfoy, let go of me—” 

“Damn it—” 

Hermione shoves herself away from him and across the room, snatching her jacket up from off the floor and swinging it over her shoulders. “I don’t want to see you again,” she says, and it comes out more confident than she could have hoped. 

“Fine,” he snaps. “Get out.” 

She reaches for the door handle and then thinks better of it, Apparating back to her bedroom at Grimmauld Place without another word. 

Even though it feels as though days have passed, it cannot be more than six or so in the morning, the light of day having broken over the horizon in bright swaths of yellow and pink. She can hear voices from downstairs, and when she looks out the window, Ron and Angelina are tossing a Quaffle in the yard, kicking up puddles of rainwater as they run. They are both laughing, even though the expressions on their faces are more fiercely grim than anything else, and the tense set of their shoulders betrays the general anxiety of the place. Certain things never change, she thinks, as she buries her hands in the warm pockets of her jacket. 

**5**

“If we approach from Euston, there’s less chance we might be spotted.” 

Harry is jotting notes on a large map of London that has been pinned up on the interior wall of the drawing room, and Bill, sitting on the arm of one of the stuffy chairs, has been interjecting occasionally. They are crowded between all of the sofas, the old piano and the coffee table, trying to get a good look at the strategy Harry has been laying out for the better part of the past half hour. The map is dotted with red marks and small flags, some of which are labelled as checkpoints. 

“Not going to work,” Bill says. “Recon suggests there are patrols set up around the south entrances.” 

“I don’t mean a full-out assault. Some of us can take on the guard, and the rest can come in through Pancras and sneak around the back, take out the checkpoint and—” 

“It’s too risky,” Ginny interrupts. “Even if we do it in the middle of the night, there are Muggles.” 

“We won’t exchange fire until we’re on the platform. School doesn’t start for another week; there shouldn’t be anyone there besides the checkpoint officers.” 

“It’s not a risk we can take,” Neville says. “Ginny is right.” 

Harry lets his quill drop from the map, giving the gathered crowd an impassive look. “This isn’t going to work if we scare ourselves off doing everything,” he says. 

“It isn’t about being scared, Harry! This is about people, about human lives—” 

“Human lives are being taken either way! We can’t—” Harry breaks off, his shoulders slumped, and a momentary silence falls. 

“Look, mate,” Ron says, holding out his hand like some sort of benediction, “I’m with you, all right? I think if we agree to hold fire until we get onto Platform 9¾, go around three or so, middle of the night—” 

“Hold fire no matter what,” Ginny says, pursing her lips into a thin line of white. 

“No matter what,” Harry says. “We’re all agreed? No objections?” He looks pointedly at Bill, who shrugs and stands up, stretching his arms above his head. 

“I’ll arrange an emergency Portkey for everyone,” Bill says. “In case—well, just in case.” 

“All right,” Harry says. “Let’s . . . Everyone rest up. We leave at three.” 

Hermione has been watching the proceedings from the corner of a sofa, cradling a hot cup of tea in her hands and thinking about how young Harry looks, standing unsure in front of a room full of people. She waits until everyone has slowly left before she approaches him, hesitantly thinking about exactly what she is going to say. 

“What is it?” Harry says, and then, as if realising that it came out snippy and abrupt, he turns around and takes her hand in his. “I’m sorry. What . . . oh, Hermione, what the hell are we doing?” 

She pulls him gently over to the couch and sits down across from him, running her thumb over the inside of his palm in small circles. “I want to go on the mission tonight,” she says. 

“That’s not an option.” 

“Harry, listen. I—” 

“It would be a liability.” 

“I’m completely recovered!” 

“That’s—it’s not the concussion that I’m talking about.” He is not making eye contact, staring out the window somewhere to her right, where cars pass by in the street and a group of children are kicking a football around in the park across the way. 

“Then what is it?” 

“Ginny told me, Hermione.” 

“Told you what?” 

“Kingsley. How you got the information from your source.” 

“He’s not—” 

“Hermione, you must have noticed that people are not acting the same around you.” 

“Of course I’ve _noticed_.” 

“You were the only other person who knew the location of the Diagon Alley attack in advance.” 

“Are you saying I betrayed you? Harry!” 

“No, no—look, I understand that sometimes things happen.” 

“What things?” 

“I don’t know, Hermione! All I know is that the enemy was already waiting when we got there.” 

“Oh my God. You do think I betrayed you.” 

“No. Hermione, no—” 

“I can’t believe this.” 

“Hermione, I don’t think that! I don’t. But . . . I can’t say the same for some of the others.” 

“You mean Ron.” 

“Yes. I—he told me you had become distant in the past few weeks.” 

“We’re in the middle of a resistance, Harry!” 

“I know, Hermione, I do. I just can’t stand—I don’t want to put you in a position where you have to make difficult decisions.” 

“I can handle it, Harry.” 

He pulls her into a sudden embrace, pressing his lips hard against her forehead. His shoulders are shaking, and Hermione is stunned into silence, staring at the patterns in the carpet over his shoulder. “When Ginny brought you back that night—I thought you were dead, Hermione.” 

“Oh, Harry . . .” 

“No. Hermione, you don’t—you’ve always been there for me, always, and . . . you want to know why we’re still fighting this war? It would be so easy to accept it, just give up, live a peaceful and normal life. But for me . . . when I was young, before Ginny, you know I always saw myself marrying you.” 

“You don’t have to explain—” 

“I do. I do. Because these new laws—if even one little boy has to think that he won’t be able to marry his best friend just because neither of them has perfect blood? That isn’t a world I could live in.” 

“Harry . . . oh, Harry, I—” Her words are broken by gasping breaths that she can’t seem to control, and her throat is tight, her eyes blurry. She shakes her head and looks at the ceiling, trying not to let herself break down, here in Harry’s arms where it could be so easy. But it all falls apart. 

“Come on,” he says. “Come on. It’s all right, Hermione.” 

“I know. I know—I just can’t make it stop.” 

He strokes her hair as if she were a child, his breathing warm and steady over the top of her head. The desperate urge to cry is coursing through her but she can’t seem to do so, even though she is shaking and sucking in lungfuls of air as if she were sobbing. Harry is saying something to her, repeating something until the words finally make sense of themselves and unravel into coherency. 

“We’re going to be all right,” he is whispering, and he presses her fingers between his own. 

Eventually, things calm down, and she pulls herself away, running the sleeve of her jumper across the tears that sting her skin. Harry gives her a half-hearted and watery smile, tracing his thumb over the tops of her knuckles, and she feels a lightness over her shoulders that seems to have been missing for the longest time. This is when Ron appears in the doorway and takes one look at them before walking back out. The moment is over. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says. 

“Don’t apologise. Ron should try to understand.” 

“I don’t think—you two haven’t been doing so well, have you?” 

“It’s fine. Everything will be okay.” 

This is how the conversation ends. Molly calls the assembled household into the kitchen for a stand-up lunch, and Hermione does not think about the resistance or Malfoy at all for a blessed afternoon. 

Ron has always been her only option, she realises. This might be why the law does not seem to faze him the way it does both her and Harry. He probably assumes that whatever drought is occurring in their romance is not permanent and that one day they will end up happily ever after just as it should be. They will grow old together and look back on the struggles they faced and think, We deserve this, because fighting so many battles side by side obviously means they must end up together. It is this sort of finality that makes her feel sick and claustrophobic, that makes her avoid his approaches and ignore the hurt and confusion in his eyes when she does so. 

**6**

Hermione pulls her jacket closer to her chest, her wand jutting into the bottom of her ribs from the front pocket of her jeans. Neville is on her right, her arm looped through his elbow, like a couple taking a casual stroll through the station. George and Angelina are ahead of them, rounding the corner to where the entrance to 9¾ is located. The station is largely deserted: a man sleeps on a bench just down the corridor, and a group of touristy teenagers straggles by half asleep on their way to Platform 11. Her heart is beating out a too-loud rhythm in her chest when they round the corner, and she cannot help but cast a glance down to the south entrances, hoping to catch a glimpse of the others. The station is silent: no commotion, the occasional passenger announcement coming over the intercom in muffled tones. Angelina pulls her wand out just before passing through the wall, and the next thing she knows, Neville is pulling her through and they are in the middle of the fray. 

She does not know how, but the others have managed to arrive here first. Perhaps the information about the guards on Euston was faulty, but it does not matter now. She can make out faces in the semidarkness, Ron lit by sky blue in one second, his face contorted into a mask of rage, and in the next she sees Ginny hurtling out from behind a column, duelling madly with a uniformed wizard, her hair a halo of red behind her. She hears Harry yelling, and then someone shoves into her, and she is fighting too. 

A wand is pushing insistently into her ribs, and she is filled with a frenzied kind of panic. Her hand stretches out almost of its own accord, clawing at empty air until it makes contact with a face, and that second is enough for her to pull out her wand and yell out a curse. Later, when the announcement about the attack comes out in the _Prophet_ , discussing the bodies being removed from the station with cold, journalistic detachment, Hermione will try to remember exactly what she yelled and find that she cannot, and at the thought that she may have killed someone in that instant without any forethought, without any time to prepare for the responsibility of having killed someone, a cold chill will flood through somewhere deep in her bones, followed by the absence of feeling, like the gradual fading of sunlight. But for now she keeps running, fighting in a mess of gritted teeth and spent magic. 

The explosion comes in a rush of heat and sound, like a sonic boom that bursts across her mind in a deep hum, and someone crashes into her from behind, pushing her down and knocking the breath out of her lungs. Hermione rolls over gasping, the lack of oxygen pulling behind her ribs like a tightening cord. Everything is over-bright in the aftermath of fire and she blinks blindly, managing to catch a flash of white-blond hair. Then the lights are blotted out and a weight presses down over her hips as he straddles her, grabbing her wrists when she tries to hit him. With her other hand she reaches frantically across the floor, trying to find her wand, before changing tactics and swinging her fist, hearing the satisfyingly muffled crack when it makes contact with his jaw. 

If he is stunned, it only lasts for a moment, because both her hands are being pressed into the cold concrete above her head, and she is stretched out beneath him, wand nowhere in sight. There are flames rising in the corner of her vision, and in the brief flashes of flickering red light and ash she is able to confirm what she already suspected: this is Draco Malfoy, his lip bleeding and his hair plastered in odd angles across his forehead. He is stronger than her, clenching her wrists so hard that she can feel her bones crushing together, and he presses his legs harder against the ground when she tries to throw him off. For one horrible moment, she is incredibly conscious of his weight on top of her and she thinks, I am going to die tonight. 

She knows that behind all the fear and adrenaline pulsing through her, the overwhelming emotion that she is going to feel in her final moments—as all of her neurons light up in one last grand finale, spilling across the landscape of her mind in a rush of endorphins, the brightness at the end of the tunnel—will not be terror but regret, because she is young and because they are all fighting each other in the middle of the night when they shouldn’t be fighting at all. She is going to be killed by someone she has known for almost half her life. His wand is pressed against the hollow of her throat, his pulse racing through the length of hawthorn and into her skin, and she is gasping uncontrollably, hot tears burning behind her eyes and in her throat because she does not want to die and how could she have known that things would turn out like this? 

“What are you waiting for?” she screams, hysterical, her voice caught in the force of the battle. His eyes meet hers, and the next thing she knows, he reaches across the pavement and grabs her wand, and she is tumbling across the floorboards of their room at the Cauldron. 

“What are you doing?” he yells, his face twisted into a mask of absolute rage as he staggers up and off of her. The room is pitch black and unnaturally silent compared to the station—she can see him silhouetted by moonlight through the window. It takes her a moment to regain her breath, but when she does, confusion and then anger flood through her in equal measure. 

“Bring me back!” she cries. “Take me back there!” 

“You weren’t supposed to be involved! You fucking reckless—” 

“What are you even talking about?” 

“You said you weren’t going on the mission!” 

“We never discussed this!” 

“We—” He breaks off suddenly, his eyes impossibly wide and his face flushed. 

“You—you read my . . . Damn it! Why didn’t I realise it?” 

“I pride myself on subtlety.” 

“Shut up! Is that why they knew we were coming? You used Legilimency on me and told them everything?” 

“Hermione—” 

“Stop it! Stop using my name! You don’t have the right! You don’t know me!” 

He steps toward her, pushing her shoulders roughly against the wall, and she lashes out at him wildly, jerking her fist forward until he catches it and slams her wrist back so hard that she feels a snapping pain, a horrible cracking sound, and her breath catches in her throat. She goes limp, and he pushes harder, as though he expects her to fight him—as though he wants her to fight him, but she stops putting forward any kind of resistance. Part of her knows that she is provoking him. Part of her—some distant selfish dark twisted feral part of her—wants to see him get angry, wants to see the empty expression on his face shattering into something that she can recognise. 

When he drops his hands from her with a dull carelessness, she reaches out and pulls him back, and she hits him harder than she thought she could, so hard that the palm of her hand stings. 

“I’m—” she says, her voice breaking. 

For a moment he just stands there, his head turned slightly from the force of the impact. He steps closer, and she is sure he has finally snapped, but he slams his hand into the wall beside her head and entwines his fingers tight in her hair, pressing his forehead against hers. Her pulse is racing, thousands of tiny electric shocks coursing through her nerves, the tension from every dream and every memory she has ever had winding into a coil somewhere deep inside her. She presses her nails into his shoulder blades through the fabric of his shirt and almost unconsciously presses her hips against his. She hears his breath catch in his throat and— _oh_. Like a horrible sort of slow dance, his eyes are dark when he finally leans that last centimetre. His lips touch the corner of her mouth, and she exhales, and everything unravels from there. 

He bites her lower lip so hard that she tastes blood, and she hears herself saying something that might not even be words, muffled against his mouth. It isn’t even a kiss: an arrhythmic clash of teeth and lips that leaves her bruised and unbearably lightheaded. He pushes his knee between hers, his hand wandering up her thigh, pulling her leg up and around his hip so that he is pressed hard against her, and she tilts her head back and closes her eyes as he bites a trail down her neck, under her collar— 

What is she doing? 

She pushes him away so suddenly that she surprises even herself, and she does not want to imagine the expression on her face because if it is anything like the dull, feverish sort of fear hovering behind his eyes then she could not hold it together for one more minute. She shoves her hand into her jacket pocket, closing her fingers around the emergency Portkey, and the image of him dissolves in a dizzy whirlwind of colour. 

She stumbles onto the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, the chill air stinging her face until she manages to fumble for the doorknob and collapse in the entryway. 

“Hermione?” she hears a voice saying, a familiar female voice pitched high with concern. 

Her heart beats wildly. Her thoughts are scattered. 

She let him. It repeats over and over in her mind as she tries to decide whether or not the faint feeling welling up at the edges of her vision will consume her. She knows that he is still standing there in that room and she cannot even imagine what is running through his mind: the steady, calculated map of his thoughts that she can observe but never hope to penetrate. She imagines him as he was in her arms earlier that morning, a mess of blood and racing pulse and pale skin that she can no longer get out of her head. He could have killed her at the station, and the idea of him has traced its way under her skin like some insidious weed that grows where it is least wanted. 

She let him. 

**7**

Molly pulls her up off the floor and drags her over to the couch, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and fussing over the swelling in her wrist. People filter into the room occasionally. Luna appears at one point dragging a semiconscious Fleur behind her, and when she sees Hermione, the expression on her face melts instantly into one of relief. 

“No, no, Molly—she just took a bit of a knock to the head. She’ll be fine,” she says, passing Fleur off to her mother-in-law. “Hermione, I’m so glad—Harry thought he saw you pinned by one of them.” 

“I was,” Hermione says, thinking as fast as she can. “He had his wand to my throat. I used the Portkey to escape.” 

“Thank goodness,” comes the sudden voice of Harry from his appearance in the entrance hall. He is followed into the room by the remaining resistance members, some bearing minor injuries but most sporting triumphant grins. 

“We did it?” Fleur says weakly, and Harry gives a tight nod, pulling off his glasses and running the back of his hand across his eyes. 

“No casualties?” Hermione says. “Muggles—” 

“None,” Ginny interrupts. “We destroyed the checkpoint before they could mount a defence and got out of there before the fight could really get started.” 

Harry swings his arm across his girlfriend’s shoulders, letting out a strangled sort of half-laugh, and George claps him over the back. 

“Brilliant strategy, mate,” he crows. “Just brilliant.” 

Hermione thinks Harry is almost blushing, his face going different shades of pink as congratulations make the rounds among the group. The tight feeling that has been growing in her chest ever since leaving the battle dissipates in a rush, leaving behind a dull pain in her wrist and her bleeding lip. 

Most of them head straight off to bed, some Disapparating to their own homes and some just opting to spend the night on the drawing room floor, wrapped in blankets provided by a bustling Molly Weasley. Hermione sits with Ginny in the kitchen, helping to distribute cups of tea and to apply bandages. When silence eventually falls with the first light of dawn through the windows, Ginny turns to her with her wand poised in her hand. 

“I can heal that for you,” she says, gesturing vaguely. Hermione reaches up to feel the place where her lip is swollen and coated in dried blood, and she hopes that Ginny does not notice the way her face flushes so suddenly in a lightheaded rush that she could not have anticipated. 

“No,” Hermione says. “I fell and . . . I bit my lip.” 

“All right,” Ginny says. “I can heal it for you.” 

“Yes, I suppose you—” 

She does not get a chance to finish, because Ginny mutters the spell and then the pain is gone. Then she stands up and disappears onto the staircase. Hermione wants to call her back, to let herself sob into her shoulder while they tell each other everything like they used to, like that morning two months earlier, when she was sitting by the side of the pond behind the Burrow, her books sprawled out in the grass around her, and Ginny threw herself down on the ground and closed her bright eyes against the impossibly blue sky, the ghost of a smile hovering around the corners of her lips. 

“Oh, Hermione,” she had said, voice far-off and uncharacteristically shy. “Hermione, he was wonderful.” 

But she hears the door close at the end of the upstairs hall, and she still has not moved from the kitchen, so that is the end of that. 

In the safety of her own bed, she does not know why she hesitated to let Ginny heal her. Did she want to keep it like some sick sort of memento, something to remind herself every time she looks in the mirror that it was a terrible/wonderful idea? Her thoughts have become marked by the shadow of Malfoy. Even when he is not there, he lingers in the twisted sheets of her bed, the blurry images of her dreams, places he has invaded through his total absence. She feels like she must be going insane, that this much of her energy could be consumed by thoughts of one person whom she hates, that she could feel so physically drained, as though the idea of him is a fire that consumes the oxygen of her mind. She feels hyper-focused and unfocused all at once as she drifts into a dream of blood and tight nerves only to wake up hours later feeling un-rested and surreal, the pure light of day spilling across her eyelids. 

**8**

Ron is sitting quietly in the kitchen when she goes to make herself breakfast, and what starts off as comfortable silence rapidly transforms into an awkward question of who is going to speak first. She is determined to keep quiet, and perhaps he senses this, because she hears him inhale and braces herself against her mug of coffee. 

“Hermione,” he says, “is there anything you want to tell me?” 

“Is there something you would like to hear?” 

“Don’t be like that.” 

“Ron, you’ve been avoiding me since Friday morning—” 

“Are you in love with someone else?” 

It takes her a moment to process this question. Her first reaction is to laugh, but she realises this will not help anything, because the situation is anything but humorous, and there is a strange sort of fluttery feeling in her chest that she could not explain if she tried. She settles for saying, “What?” 

“I saw you and Harry yesterday.” 

“What you saw—Ron. You know what? This is not about Harry, and the reason it isn’t about Harry is because even if I were in love with him, or someone else, which—it could never go anywhere. This coup has turned things upside down and—we have to fight a war instead of moving on with our lives and we don’t _get_ to argue about things like who we love.” 

“That’s an awful lot of words just to say no, Hermione.” 

“How dare you? You don’t get to—” She stands suddenly, slamming her mug down on the counter so that coffee spills out across the white surface and onto the floor, and she expects Ron to do what Ron always does, to sit waiting for her to begin her rant, but instead he stands as well, catching her hand in his. “Let go of me, Ronald!” 

“Hermione! Can we please—I can’t take this! I don’t want to lose you!” 

“ _Lose me?_ Ron, you have not had a conversation with me in weeks.” 

“You think this is my fault? Let me tell you, Hermione—you are the one who cheated on me.” 

“I—” Every word she was going to say dies on her lips, leaving her standing with her mouth half open and a horrible sick feeling rising in her chest. Ron is staring at her with wide eyes, his face flushed with high spots of colour. The house has gone silent and part of her wonders how many people are listening in on their argument. “How . . .” 

Yes, on further reflection, this was probably not the best thing to say, and she realises it a second too late, after his fist has clenched white over the countertop. 

“How could I tell? Whatever you might think, I’m not stupid! I knew, Hermione, and still I kept trying, and you just got farther and farther away.” 

“You can’t blame me for wanting to be with someone who _sees me_ , Ron!” 

“I can’t blame—all right. Fine. Forget it, Hermione. Fucking pointless.” 

He storms out of the room, and Hermione stands stock still in the sunny kitchen. The steady drip, drip of coffee onto the floor eventually breaks through the barrier of her senses, and she cleans up the spill on her hands and knees. 

**9**

Malfoy is lying asleep on the bed when she arrives, rays of dusty sunshine spilling across his body in the sheets. He sits up slowly, his eyes red rimmed and dull, and he gives her a twisted half smile. “The things you put me through,” he sighs, lowering himself back onto the pillow. 

She ignores the feel of her pulse racing in her throat and does not move from her place by the door. “Why won’t you let me forget what happened with us?” she says in a rush. 

“Is that your one question?” 

“I’m serious.” 

“You know what, Hermione? I’m not in the mood for this right now.” 

“Answer the question!” 

“Just fucking fix me already,” he groans, pressing the back of his hand against his eyes. 

“Malfoy—” 

“What do you want to hear, that it was one time and it meant nothing, or do you want the truth?” 

The world is rushing in on her, and she leans back against the wall in an effort to keep herself standing. He sits up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and staring at her steadily. 

“Because the truth . . .” he says. 

“All right, stop—” 

“The truth is that you loved every minute of it and you know it.” 

“No—” 

“Tell me you don’t think about it.” 

“I don’t think about—” 

“Tell me you don’t imagine what it would be like to do it again. Tell me you’ve never thought about how it would feel if I slammed you up against the—” 

“Enough. Oh my God.” 

“You know that it’s true,” he says. “Now get over here and keep up your end of the bargain.” 

She suddenly realises that passing out is a very distinct possibility, and she kneels on the floor, trying to steady her vision. Her fingers are fumbling the needle and she has to take several deep breaths before she can be confident she won’t spill the contents of the little glass bottle balanced so precariously in the palm of her hand. His eyes follow her motions darkly. 

“Relax,” he says. 

The tip of the needle pricks into her finger with a sharp pain, and she bites back a gasp on the inside of her lip. 

“Damn it,” she says, trying again and aiming more closely for the bottle. 

“Does making me wait give you some sort of sick enjoyment?” 

“I’m—trying,” she says through her teeth. 

When she finally makes her way over to where he is sitting, the tide of anxiety in her chest has risen to a crescendo, and she almost jumps when his hand finds her hip, the inside of his arm etched with the sinister black of the Dark Mark. She presses the needle in and watches as the shudder passes over his face, the twitch of his lips, his fingers pressing hard into her hip over the hem of her blouse. Then it is over, and when she looks back down, the Mark has faded again into a barely visible web of lines under his skin. 

“You know what it does?” he says, as if to himself. “He may be dead, but still—he creeps into your mind so slowly that you don’t even realise it’s happening.” 

“So you run away. You become a traitor to your cause and you run from it.” 

“You would do it too, to keep him out of your thoughts,” he snarls. “My reasons are my own. I got desperate. I made a choice. But maybe this is worse, having you haunting me instead.” 

“Malfoy . . .” 

“Don’t,” he says, rising from the bed and standing over her. “It doesn’t have to be like this.” 

“I can’t,” she says. “I love—” 

“Weasley?” he snaps, a particular edge in his voice as if he is close to laughter. “Please. You’re an emotional wreck waiting to happen, Hermione.” 

He is slowly stepping closer, and the worst part is that she does not even try to stop him. 

“What is wrong with you?” she breathes. “Why are you doing this? You’re sick.” 

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe.” 

His voice is a vibration against her forehead, his lips ghosting over her skin in a slow shiver that winds its way down her neck and into the deep places of her body, blooming hot and dark like a flowering vine. She can feel her face twisted into something like fear, even though this is the last thing she is feeling. He entwines his fingers with hers, the pressure of them warm and almost too tight as he pulls her lower lip between his, just barely, and her eyes fall closed and things spiral into blackness. 

She gives in, pulling him closer with her fingers hooked in his belt, kissing him hard, and the tension pent up inside her recedes and crashes like the tide during a storm, building every time he pulls himself closer to her and she feels the hard pressure of him against her stomach. She runs her fingers through his hair, pulling his head back so that his neck is exposed to her lips, so that the place where his pulse is thrumming fast is hot against her tongue and his voice strangles in the drag of a moan. His hands are tracing jerky lines down her back, pushing her blouse up so that his fingernails dig into her skin every time she grinds her hips against him. He breathes in halting gasps, his lips crashing down against hers. 

His right hand is tracing circles in her lower back while his left fumbles with her belt, the soft clink of metal against metal accompanying the pressure of his fingers. 

“Malfoy—” 

“Come on,” he says, hoarse, working the button of her jeans. “Let me.” 

“I . . .” 

Her breath rushes out of her when he touches her there, his fingers curling against the heat that builds inside the darkness of her body, sending her into a dizzy sort of headlong plunge against his shoulder, her forehead pressed against his collarbone as his motions course through her in waves. She is biting her lip so hard that it hurts, one of his hands entwined with hers. She is clenching her fist so tight that it must be hurting him, but he says nothing, the length of his fingers drawing out of her in a torturously slow motion that has her shaking against him, spots of white light bursting out across the back of her eyes. 

“Stop,” she says, her words coming out in short bursts. “Stop stop _stop_.” 

He does, so suddenly that she is left chilled in a way that reaches deeper into her than she could have imagined. Malfoy is looking down at her with an empty sort of heat flickering behind his eyes, and her hand is trapped between them. When it brushes over the front of his trousers he grits his teeth, and she steps back, fastening her jeans and her belt and not meeting his eyes. 

“This is not happening again,” she says. 

“Sooner or later—” He stops, closing his eyes and then relaxing the tense set of his shoulders. “You’re eventually going to realise that you need this as much as I do.” 

She turns to leave, but the feel of his fingers on her wrist stops her. He is holding a folded piece of parchment, and he presses it into the palm of her hand. 

“What is this?” 

“Think of it as payment for services rendered,” he says, his lips twitching even though his eyes remain flat and cold. “Tell me when you decide to give in.” 

She nods tersely, collecting the case from the floor and Disapparating in a whirl of sunshine and dust before she can tell him never or now or whatever she would have said if she had given herself the chance. 

Her room at Grimmauld Place seems damp and cold compared to every other place in the world, and when she unfolds the parchment, almost translucent in the light of the window, it takes her a moment to realise that the chill rising within her is not from her surroundings but from the image on the page. This is a map of Hogsmeade, a perfect diagram of the checkpoint laid out in straight lines of black ink. Hermione puts the parchment down on the nightstand and sits with her head in her hands for a long time. 

**10**

The chill of late summer rushes through all the layers of her clothing when she Apparates into the village alongside Ginny, their wands drawn out in the light rain. The other members of the resistance are appearing around her, the distant lights of the checkpoint blinking on as the Caterwauling charm goes off in a shrieking siren of noise. There are voices yelling from the upper floors of some of the businesses, and a head emerges from the second-storey window over the Three Broomsticks. 

“Stay inside!” Harry yells. “Stay—” 

It’s too late. Curses are already flying through the air in flashes of bright colour, lighting up the standing water on the ground with the pale reflection of magic, and the body in the window slumps forward silently. 

Ginny screams beside her in anguished rage as she rushes forward, her wand brandished haphazardly in the air. Hermione only pauses for a moment before she too is running, her breath shallow and stinging in her throat and her lungs as she races toward the place where dark shapes are streaming through the sky like shadowy comets, their enemies materialising out of the nothingness of night. She fires off hexes in every direction, stopping a charging figure in its tracks as it launches toward her, and she keeps running, part of her trying to catch a glimpse of white-blond hair and part of her trying to see anything but that. Then she is tumbling forward, and she can see nothing at all, only the cobblestones being pressed against her face. 

She screams, kicking wildly and throwing her attacker off. In the flashes of half light she does not recognise him, a fact for which she is briefly and painfully thankful as she points her wand in the vague direction of his chest. She hesitates. 

It’s not worth it. 

The thought hits her suddenly in a rush of doubt that has her wand hand shaking. The enemy—the _enemy_ —is wiping blood off his mouth with his sleeve, drawing his wand, and still she stands frozen, unable to cast the curse that will remove the threat permanently, that will leave nothing but an empty shell in its wake. Even when he opens his mouth to say the words that will end her life, all she can think is that this is a human being standing in front of her, and if she kills him, she is no better than the ones she is fighting against. 

The pale green bursts out of the corner of her vision in an almost slow motion, and she braces herself for the impact and the oblivion that never comes. The body falls lifeless to the ground with a dull sort of thud, the wind rushing in her ears as she turns to see—to see . . . 

Malfoy is staring at her wide eyed from across the battlefield, his wand still drawn and shaking, and for a moment this is all she sees before he turns, disappearing into the fray. 

Her senses fade back slowly in a rush of colour and movement. All around her, in the driving rain, her friends are barely holding on. She grits her teeth and pushes all thoughts out of her head, and she keeps fighting. 

**11**

She does not know why she came here. Battle weary and drenched with warmth from a shower that scalded the remains of magic from her body, she lay down and Apparated without really thinking about it, sinking into her bed at Grimmauld Place but ending up in their room at the Cauldron. Sleep comes over her slowly, her dreams tangled in sheets that smell like citrus: half images, names that don’t match up with faces, a slow-building tension that fades when she wakes up. The room is quiet and dark, and when she gathers the presence of mind to really look around, she sees Malfoy sitting in the chair by the desk, watching her silently. 

“How long have you been here?” she says, her voice sounding distant and muffled. 

“Not long,” he says. “Come to interrogate me?” 

His face is half covered in shadow, and she reaches over to turn the lamp on before he can hide behind the darkness and keep her guessing. He closes his eyes in the sudden brightness, and she waits until he exhales and looks back over at her. 

“Why are we doing this?” she says. 

“I have information you need,” he answers flatly. 

“Please. You’re barely cooperating.” 

“For now,” he says. “But play along and maybe I will.” 

He walks across the room and sits on the edge of the bed, the tips of his fingers barely touching hers over the sheets. As much as she wants to say that she still hates him, there is something about the peace that descends over them in these moments, here in this room, where they orbit one another like distant planets, and the pastel passage of time seems to slow down, jerking her into an alternate dimension where everything is citrus and tinted with sunshine, even now, in the very blackness of night. 

Eventually, she slides down, kicking the sheets to her feet in the humidity and pillowing her head in the crook of her elbow. He shifts into place behind her, his breathing a steady rise and fall of his chest against her back. For a moment this could be Ron, or Harry, or anyone else in the entire world. Her thoughts are relaxed, but everything inside her is wound tightly. 

Hermione looks down to where his arm is curled around her waist, where the faint shape of the Dark Mark is just barely visible under his skin. She only hesitates for a second before she reaches out to touch him, running her fingers over the swirling lines as he completely stills behind her. 

“Hermione—don’t.” 

“I don’t understand. He’s dead. So why is this still . . . ?” 

“I don’t know, all right? Maybe this is just the way it is.” 

“The way it is,” she says. “Like blood is the way it is and this war is the way it is. I’m tired of it. You don’t even believe it anymore.” 

He sighs against her neck. “No,” he says. “Does it matter?” 

“It matters. To me.” 

As she speaks, she can feel him playing with the ends of her hair, weaving them through his fingers like ribbons. She wonders when she became okay with this, the strange sort of companionship found in needles and secrets and the contact of skin on skin. She wonders if she is okay with it at all, even though she closes her eyes and feels him breathing, and when his lips find the place between her shoulder and her neck, her thoughts slip away like rainwater through her fingers. 

His hand is steady on her hip, pulling her back into him, his fingers travelling down her bare thigh and playing idly with the hem of her boyshorts, a sort of sleepy suspense building in her chest until she flips over to face him. 

“You’re making me nervous,” she says. 

“Are you not all right with this?” 

“No,” she says. “None of it.” 

She kisses him. 

At first he stays completely still, maybe out of shock, but soon he goes with it, tangling his fingers in her hair in a languidly slow motion that pulls her closer, and he pushes one of his knees between hers. She knows that this is it, that by being the one to kiss him first she has plunged back into the depths of some dark and murky Rubicon from which she will never re-emerge. She is fumbling with his belt, and he breathes like someone coming up from underwater when she takes the hot length of him in her hand. He pushes against her palm almost subconsciously, his words coming out strangled and hoarse. 

“Oh, fuck, Hermione . . .” 

She kisses him harder, silencing him so that his breath comes in short bursts against her mouth, her lips bruised and flushed with a dull pain that thrills through her every time his leg pushes up against the inside of her thigh. His fingers are pressed against her hip, his thumb hooked under the band of her underwear, pulling jerkily at the fabric every time she moves. 

He shifts on top of her, leaning almost carelessly on his elbow and rolling her over with his hand on her lower back. His hair is falling into his face when she looks up at him, half lit by the lamplight, the shadows under his eyes stark in blue and grey, and she reaches up to push the strands of blond behind his ears. Her pulse is racing through her in jittery waves when he pulls the fabric down to her knees, and she kicks it off the rest of the way, the chill sudden and exhilarating until his fingers press into her and every plan she has ever had unravels into incoherency against the heat of his hand. She realises a second after the fact that the embarrassingly strangled keening sound is coming from her throat, and he exhales into her hair, his cheek pressed against the bottom of her chin, blood rushing to the spot where he is kissing her neck in a hungry, bruising pull. 

“Let me, ” he gasps. Let me. “Hermione, please.” 

“All right,” she whispers, her nails digging into her palms. “All right, Malfoy.” 

She can feel him push against her, and she holds her breath for one still moment while his mouth hovers over hers, their lips just barely touching. He slides into her, and his breath catches in his throat at the same time that she releases hers in a rush. 

His arm is shaking as he holds himself up over her, his face caught in a sort of anguish until she pulls him back down, and his hips rock forward, and he breathes against her mouth and then her forehead and then her neck, dragging it out agonisingly. “Oh, Christ—” 

It hurts, in a slow sort of inferno that builds every time he thrusts against her, tearing down the process of her thoughts until they blend together in a haze of tension and heartbeat. His hand is running fitfully up and down her side, pushing up under her shirt and around the curve of her ribs, his nails digging into her bones through the skin. Colours are brighter: the grey of his half-closed eyes, the pastel reflection of the stained glass lamp over the wall, all of it dissolving into an unbearable flush that blooms across her face in a rush of blood. 

His heart is racing against her chest through layers of clothing when he pulls out and then in, and it all crashes through her like waves, like the steady pull of a tide that drags her body out to sea, her pulse rushing hotly in her ears like the ocean trapped inside a seashell. Words tumble out of him against the hollow of her throat, his shoulders shaking, her hands tangled in his hair as his rhythm falls apart and goes erratic. He is biting her neck so hard that it stings, and this is—this is . . . 

The world bursts out in a web of slow lightning across the back of her eyes, her fingers clenching in fast spasms on his back, saltwater crashing against rocks, and a tight cry tears out of him against her skin, his body shuddering into a collapse, the tremor passing through her like a snapping cord. 

She breathes in gasps, sucking in lungfuls of air as if she were drowning, the scene around her fading back into sharp focus: shadows on the walls, the weight of him on top of her, the heat between her thighs, the war still blazing on outside the windows of this room. He pulls out of her slowly and lies against her side, his shoulder crushing her forearm, his hand a solid pressure against the bottom of her ribs. She turns her head into the warmth of his neck, his skin damp against her forehead and her hair as he breathes in long drags. 

“Malfoy,” she says. 

“Don’t.” His eyes are closed, his fingers tracing lazy patterns across her hips. “Just . . .” 

He exhales, and they fall into silence.


End file.
